Sarah Stern

Brand design decisions can sometimes feel difficult and subjective. Enter...brand adjectives and some AI experimentation. In relaunching my business, I am using the same steps that I go through with health and wellness sector clients. ? Step one: choose three brand adjectives. ? Brand adjectives are helpful as north stars that we can point to later in the design process to help choose things like fonts and colors. The ones that I chose for myself were:? ? 1. Approachable 2. Knowledgable 3. Dependable I can use them to ask questions like:? ? "Does this color feel dependable?" ? "Maybe a serif font would come across as knowledgeable?" ? "How about this logo — does it make the brand look approachable?" ? It can be helpful to have a bunch of adjectives to choose from. In order to offer a list specifically geared toward health and wellness industry brands, I hopped on Chat GPT. ? Using AI's ability to summarize the industry reality as it currently exists and using my own vision for a healthcare future, I refined the list to 75 words that I will use with clients going forward. ? Another way to get more specific with a list of brand adjectives is to use "Goldilocks statements."? ? So for my three adjectives, I thought about a word that is similar to each adjective, but doesn't quite describe my brand. For example:? ? 1. Approachable but not passive 2. Knowledgable but not exclusive? 3. Dependable but not uninteresting? ? I can use these statements in the same way.? ? "Does this color feel dependable or uninteresting?" ? "Maybe a serif font would come across as knowledgeable...or just exclusive?" ? "How about this logo — does it make the brand look approachable or passive?" — ? Try it for your own brand! Does it help you make visual decisions? #BrandDesign #HealthDesign

My clients are at the forefront of AI research in healthcare. ?? Enjoyed creating these little "paper plate award" badges to celebrate the one year anniversary of the OpenNotes Lab on social media. I'm looking forward to seeing the impact that OpenNotes has on the ways that AI is ethically implemented to serve patients and clinicians.

My small business word of the year is ? build. ? This year I will ask myself: "Is this helping me build professional relationships and display my depth of health communication design skills?" "Is this building from what I've already accomplished?" Over the past five years, I've been slowly building my professional confidence and industry network to match the depth of my health communication design skillset. There have been plenty of chronic illness and pandemic related interruptions during that time — but I've kept going. With the help of the Chronic Boss Collective, I recently registered an LLC in my new business name. Watch for more announcements on this in the months to come! Thank you Lilly Stairs for leading a vision board workshop that inspired this goal-setting for the year. #SmallBusiness #NewYear

What kind of logo best suits your healthcare brand? Typically, my clients are choosing between a logotype or a logomark. What's the difference? A logomark uses an image or icon. Oftentimes this stands alone — think a Nike swoosh. Using a mark this way requires some brand recognition. A logotype is the name of the company and uses only typography. Think Google. This is better for a brand that is not yet recognizable and has a lower budget. For Catalyze Therapy, we found an in between. The "C" over the "T" serves as a mark, and looks like a person. The human experience of therapy is at the core of the brand.

Last night I led a visual storytelling workshop for Humans in Healthcare. Participants were healthcare professionals, patients, and caregivers who all have had unique career paths. We discussed the emotion and mayhem that goes into redefining a career path. Although we're told our career should fit into a neat path (maybe your parent was a doctor, so you went to medical school, and then assumed you'd be a doctor until you retired), life is rarely a simple story arc. Careers aren't either. Inspired by a book called "Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative" by Jane Alison, participants created moodboards of various shapes that better described their unique career journeys. Some chose interlocking branches or mountains. This is my third time running this workshop — the first time was limited to people living with chronic illness. Participants spoke about how choosing a new shape for their patient story left them feeling like something beautiful could come out of their painful experiences. This workshop came at a critical point in my own career as a designer in healthcare. With enough momentum in my business, I'll be announcing new updates as the year closes.

One of the most important considerations for a logomark is scale. It needs to be understandable at small sizes. Meredith Mangold originally came to me for refinement of her concept on the left. Empower Health Strategies links digital health innovators with patient expertise. She hoped to show that cooperation with two hands shaking, one wearing a medical bracelet. At a small size, the cross on the medical bracelet was hard to see. I encouraged her to think of the simplest way to get her message across and we developed the logomark on the right through iterative sketches. This logomark is understandable at small sizes and in combination with typography.

When you want to design a patient-centered solution — talk to patients. ?? It’s a simple but often undervalued step. When chronic patients put our heads together, we come up with healthcare design solutions that matter. Working with Leah Schulz and Trudy Wonder on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Coforma | Health+? Long COVID Healthathon was my ideal collaboration. We enlisted a crew of other chronic patients to help us define our target problem and worked as a team of three to prototype a solution. I delivered the Long Hauler Smart ID card’s brand identity, video, infographic, and static prototype. You can read more about our finalist submission on the Coforma blog: https://lnkd.in/eWtF7HbA Special thanks to Meredith Mangold of Empower Health Strategies for her guidance and video debut in our explainer. That’s the power of patients??

After our visual brand consultation, Erika was able to leave her corporate job and go all in with her side hustle, Living Dappled. I love where she has taken her look and feel based on our thought partnership that grew out of the Chronic Boss Collective. It is amazing to watch her grow her Vitiligo patient advocacy brand and blog. Congratulations, Erika!

A slight change to a color makes all the difference for a brand. For a new client in the mental health industry, our color conversation was focused on saturation. Saturation is how intense a color is. You've probably seen a lot of saturated blue on the web—it's the default action or link color (even right here on LinkedIn). You've probably also seen a lot of blue in healthcare. So, would saturated blues be calming for the user? Or might they feel cold and blend in with typical digital health visuals? Would a desaturated green be more unexpected and have the desired calming effect? Which colors do you prefer—the left or right side?

A well-edited video can bring a complex concept to life. This footage was part of our finalist submission to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Long COVID Healthathon hosted by Coforma | Health+?. OUR CONCEPT ?? The Long COVID SMART ID card could offer Long COVID patients more confidence to engage in the community and help end the cycle of ED visits. The low-cost physical card and Acute Incident App could improve health outcomes and quality of life; filling gaps in the care continuum. OUR TEAM ?? All research and design were carried out by our group of chronically ill patients. That's because the best health innovation comes from the lived expertise of patient experience. It was a pleasure to work with Trudy Wonder and Leah Schulz on the idea for our Healthathon submission. Meredith Mangold had a lead cameo in our explanatory video. Need help visually explaining your complex health topic? Video editing is one of my many skills as a multimedia designer.